"Vast cost in power to produce fuel"
Unlike petrol which uses no power to produce!
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Hmmm,
I cannot help but think that surley it should be possible to synthaise a liquid fuel, then we could use our existing filling stations with minor modifications.
i know they do do a Gas To Liquid =GTL diesel, which is uberclean when consumed.
And theres another one, RME/DME akin to Biodiesel, but better(apparently)
And whatever happened the German & indeed South African research into making liquid fuel out of coal?
I suspect the Germans are anticipating that fuel cell will "win out" hence the hydrogen infrastructure being developed & In the meantime it will run in modified petrol engines.
Cheers
M
Edited by dieseldogg on 25/11/2009 at 14:37
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I think the Germans produced petrol from coal during WW2 and didn't South Africa do something along those lines during trade embargos in the 50s/60s? History isn't my strong suit BTW!
Edited by Armitage Shanks {p} on 25/11/2009 at 15:37
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And whatever happened the German & indeed South African research into making liquid fuel out of coal?
The problem is that it's still a use fo fossil fuel, which from the CO2 emissions point of view is bad (leaving aside right now discussions of whether this is a valid worry, as this is the major reason for developing alternatives such as the hydrogen fuel cell), and it uses far more energy to create the hydrogen fuel than is usefully generated from it.
If there was oodles of "free" non-CO2 producing power generation available, hydrogen fuel cells might be practicable - but there isn't, so they aren't. It's a dead duck. I don't know why Honda are expending resource on this project, unless there are spin-offs.
I suspect the Germans are anticipating that fuel cell will "win out" hence the hydrogen infrastructure being developed & In the meantime it will run in modified petrol engines.
Yes, but think about the power requirements to produce the fuel. It's counter-productive.
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I have given up attempting to explain to "greenies" et al that "emissions free" hydrogen AINT.
i.e. That Hydrogen requires energy to produce
Me, I reckon nuclear fission is the only hope for our long term energy requirments.
then we CAN synthasise liquid fuels to our hearts content.
Otherwise we may stick with fusion, for all its faults.
Anyway after the Chernoble experience, perhaps low level radiation is not the killer it was thought to be?
Cheers
M
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Have you got fission and fusion the wrong way round?
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fission and fusion the wrong way round?
Yes he has. Easily done.
Chernobyl is still shunned as a place to live too. It's true that everyone who gets a big dose of radiation doesn't turn green and grow a second head immediately. But there's a statistical clustering of certain cancers in affected areas. Radioactive heavy metal particles are no joke. It doesn't take much to cause cell damage.
However, there shouldn't be too many Chernobyls if people take care, and after hydrocarbons - when that era comes - nuclear will seem tempting indeed. There's no immediate prospect of commercial fusion energy as far as I know. So fission will be the way, probably. There isn't all that much mineable uranium, which could cause difficulty. As for the health effects, it's a question of accepting a statistical loss against a material gain. A subject for endless heated and sterile political debate.
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At the risk of appearing pedantic, nuclear fission (splitting atoms) is what we can practicably do today and takes place in civilian reactors and bombs whereas nuclear fusion (as happens in the Sun) we find difficult to contain / sustain in a practical implementation.
The 'waste' products from nuclear fission tend to be highly radioactive (for a few thousand years) whereas fusion results in a stable isotope so is much cleaner albeit releasing much lower amounts of energy in the process.
The long term problem with fission is what to do with the radioactive waste for a thousand years or so, it was previously kept as a liquid in the hope that this would facilitate further processing to render it safe but containment of liquids is difficult as they have a tendency to leak, not sure what they do now or will do when we inevitably revert to this power source in the next 10 years.
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